The Final Key: Part Two of Triad (12 page)

So he held Moonglaze, grieving, waiting for the final words of Althor's death.

Devon Majda accompanied Soz to the observation bay, which curved out from the hull of the cylinder in a transparent bubble of dichromesh glass. The gravity from the ship's rotation put the bubble "below" them, and Soz climbed down into it on a transparent ladder. They could have taken a lift, but she preferred using her muscles. It helped keep her in shape in the ship's low gravity. The spherical bubble was twenty meters in diameter, but seen from out in space it was no more than a tiny spark of light on the hull of the cruiser.

Interstellar space surrounded Soz, its jeweled stars and galactic dust visible through the transparent walls of the bay. A huge chair at the end of a robot arm occupied the center.

Dyad Chair.

Devon was above her on the ladder. Soz glanced up at her. "Does anyone use this Chair?" Only seven such Chairs existed, and only Rhon psions could survive their power.

"Not recently," Devon said. "You're the only Rhon psion who has been onboard for months."

"Why is it on the cruiser?" As far as Soz knew, neither Kurj nor Dehya came here with any regularity. If some other Rhon psion attempted to access a Dyad Chair, they probably wouldn't succeed. Kurj had tried with several before he became Imperator. The Chairs hadn't harmed him, but neither had they responded to his presence.

"Imperator Skolia needs a backup," Devon said. "We can

take this Chair anywhere, if something happens to the ones he and Pharaoh Dyhianna use."

Soz reached the bottom of the ladder and stepped onto a clear platform. The Chair was ten meters above her, huge and silent. An odd sensation tugged at her mind, hard to define ... familiarity? The Chair recognized her. But surely that was fancy. It was an inanimate object.

Devon joined her and they stood considering the Chair. Then Devon said, "Hard to believe its power can kill."

Soz extended her arm toward it, her fingers curved as if she would touch the great throne, though it was far out of reach. And yet...

She lowered her arm. "It knows I'm here."

"Why do you say that?" Devon asked.

"Right now it's quiescent, but only in our universe." She turned to Devon. "It isn't certain about me."

Devon stood against the backdrop of stars, her hair as dark as space, a star queen in a star field. "No one else has reported feeling life within it."

Soz didn't know if "life" was the right word. Sentience maybe. "It wants a member of the Dyad. Not me."

"I've always wondered what the Chairs think about the Dyad," Devon said. "Does it consider them part of itself? Colleagues? Children? Something else entirely?"

"It watches over them." Soz hesitated. That wasn't right "They are part of its universe. It knows. It watches." She stopped, frustrated, aware she was repeating herself but unable to find better words. "It wants their existence to continue."

Devon regarded her curiously. "Why?"

"I've no idea," Soz said. The chair dated from the Ruby Empire, a civilization that had fallen thousands of years ago, and with such a thorough collapse, modern peoples might never recover its lost sciences. This Chair had spent five millennia in space, untouched by humans, adrift in a derelict space station. Maybe that was why it watched over Kurj and Dehya; they and Soz's grandparents were the only humans it had known during all those thousands of years.

But it wasn't ready to accept Soz. It might never be. And if it didn't accept her—it might kill her.

7

A Leviathan Fallen

Although Roca had lived on Lyshriol for twenty-five years, the Orbiter was central in her memories. When she thought of her family, she recalled this space station where her parents had spent so much of their lives; where Dehya and Eldrin lived with Taquinil; where Kurj stayed when he wasn't on Diesha; where members of the Ruby Dynasty came in retreat, to the glades and slopes of Valley, forever spring, basking in the light of the Sun Lamp as it moved across Sky. Conflicted emotions surged within her, the bittersweet joy of returning home.

As a former dancer in the Parthonia Royal Ballet, and now as an Assembly Councilor, Roca spent a great deal of time on the world Parthonia, in Selei City, capital of the Imperialate. She knew well the Amphitheater of Memories where the Assembly met, the Hall of Memories that housed state functions, and the Hall of Chambers, a vaulted cathedral where the Assembly recorded news broadcasts. Her mother had declared the birth of the Imperialate there. Selei City spoke to both the artist and politician within Roca, facets of her personality that were more alike than most people realized. She performed in the Assembly, seeking to sway other councilors to her view. But when she came here, to the Orbiter, it was for family, not politics.

In the fertile Valley, Roca and the Bard strolled across a meadow, and the velvety silver-grass sprang back up after they passed. Flower cups, rosy and round, grew in scattered bursts of color among the green. The magrail station lay behind them, its rustic platform blending with the landscape. Ahead, the land sloped upward, lush as it climbed into the mountains. Groves of trees imported from terraformed worlds clustered on the hills and shaded several houses.

Eldrinson leaned on his cane as he walked, his hand hinged around the lyrine head at its top. His doctors had offered him mechanized braces for his legs, assuring him that he would barely notice the mesh covering. He would have none of it He limped so much, Roca worried he wouldn't reach the house. Yet he seemed content, much more so than on Diesha. The rural surroundings here soothed him even if it wasn't the Dalvador countryside he longed to see.

Roca would have given him anything, anything at all, to make him happy. She wished he would let her lavish him with gifts, as Ruby queens had done for their consorts throughout the history of the Ruby Empire. But he didn't want presents. He just wanted to go home to his family and his work as the Dalvador Bard. He never truly understood his status as her consort, what it meant that he had the right to an Assembly seat. Politics alternately bored and annoyed him. Her attempts to stir his interest put him to sleep. He couldn't care less about her power; he had married her for love.

The scent of bell-cones on the trees tickled Roca's nose and she sneezed. It stirred her memories from early childhood: her father, laughing as she gathered armfuls of bells and brought him the sticky mass like a present

About a kilometer distant, the valley cut steeply upward. The house where she had lived as a child with her parents stood up there, a stone mansion with spare, clean architecture. Its windows were open to the air and its wide entrance had no door, only a polished stone border. It never rained on the Orbiter, the breezes were always gende, and the sky never clouded. On a world where they could have perfect weather every day, they needed no windowpanes or doors.

Kurj lived there when he was on the Orbiter, which meant right now it was empty. Roca and Eldrinson were headed to a different house at the base of the slope. Spiral-leaved trees shaded it and dappled its walls. This home did have a door, and it glowed with holoart, a swirl of blue, a wash of blossoms, a hint of gold tessellations around the edges, all subde, all lovely. Mirrored tiles paneled the roof and reflected the sky—blue sky, the color humans tended to choose. Its McCarthy-wellstone surfaces adapted to temperature changes, reflective to cool the house or dark to absorb heat, whatever

the inhabitants desired. The tiles glistened in the light of the Sun Lamp.

Eldrinson spoke for the first time since they had left the magrail station. "I like it, too."

She smiled, and his eyes crinkled with affection. When they reached the house, she touched a gold circle by the door. Chimes rang within and the scent of bell-cones wafted about them. After a few moments the sounds and the fragrance faded. They continued to wait, but nothing more happened.

Eldrinson adjusted his spectacles. "Perhaps no one is home."

Roca frowned. "I thought Dehya was going to be here."

"Our ship was early," he reminded her.

"I sent a message." She studied the door, trying to find some hint in its swirling patterns that it knew they had arrived.

"Greetings?" she asked.

"Are you talking to me?" Eldrinson asked.

ŤTo the door."

"Greetings," the door said in a mellow voice.

Eldrinson jerked, his hand reflexively tightening on his cane. "The house is talking to us."

She smiled at his alarmed expression. "You see me talk to windows and walls all the time."

"That doesn't make it any less bizarre." He eyed the door warily. "House, are you going to let us in?"

"You may enter if you wish," the house answered.

He rested his hands on the head of his cane. "Won't it annoy the Ruby Pharaoh if you admit people when she isn't homer

"You and Councilor Roca are on the list of those allowed automatic entry."

"Oh." Eldrinson blinked. "Well. Good."

The door shimmered and vanished.

"Ah!" He backed up with a fast step. "What is this?"

"That's new," Roca said. "It must be a molecular airlock." She walked into an airy foyer inside and turned back to him. "ISC passed funding a while back for the naval research labs to develop better airlocks, but I didn't realize they had done a model for houses."

"Gods forbid the door should just open," Eldrinson muttered. He limped inside, glowering, which reminded her of Soz. She held back her smile, though. Neither father nor daughter appreciated that others found their vexation charming. Both considered it an affront to their dignity.

"It's improved technology," Roca said.

"Then it should go away." Eldrinson scowled at the space where the door had stood. "So what is it?"

"A molecular airlock is a membrane," Roca said. "A modified lipid bilayer. It contains enzymes. They're like keys. They fit other molecules in the membrane. Locks."

He limped cautiously back to the entrance and squinted at the door frame. "How did it vanish like that?"

'The house applies a potential to the membrane."

He regarded her dubiously. "A what?"

"Potential," she said. "It's a field you can't see. Different potentials activate different keys. The key fits the lock, and that changes the permeability of the membrane." She motioned at the entrance. "Right now it looks empty, but really the membrane is in a new state, one permeable to air and light. And us."

He blanched. "What if it changes while we are in it?"

Roca thought about it. "It would be like slamming a door on your body, I'd guess. But the EI should be smart enough to avoid that. When we want to 'close' the entrance, it applies the previous key and the door reappears."

"Like Dehya and Kurj."

Roca went over to him. "Dehya and Kurj are lipid bilay-ers?"

He laughed softly. "Judging from the look on your face, I take it that would be an odd comment."

"I don't know. I'm not sure what you mean."

"Neither am I." He motioned at the door. "All this about keys and locks sounds like the Dyad. Dehya and Kurj joined the Dyad by entering Locks. Now they are Keys. Valdor only knows how that all works."

Roca smiled, thinking it unlikely that Valdor, the larger of the two Lyshriol suns, knew how it worked. It was true, though, that the lost technology which had set Lyshriol in its unlikely orbit around a double star had also produced the

locks, The people ot modern Kaylicon had yet to figure out the ancient technology they had rediscovered when they regained the stars. Only three Locks existed: the Orbiter, or First Lock, found derelict in space; the Second Lock on the world Raylicon; and the Third Lock, a station currently orbiting Parthonia, but which ISC intended to move to Onyx Platform.

Perhaps ESComm had learned of the plan to move the Lock and attacked Onyx to steal it. Until her people unraveled the technology that had created these ancient machines, no one could build more Locks. However, Rhon psions could use them to create the Kyle web, with the Dyad as Keys. The Traders had neither Locks nor Keys: hence, no Kyle web. They deplored the disadvantage that gave them in comparison to the Imperialate.

"That's clever," Roca said. "I would never have thought to compare Dyad Keys and Locks to a molecular airlock."

He grinned at her. "Of course it's clever. I thought of it."

"Such modesty."

He smirked. "That is why you love me so much."

A snort came from the doorway. "For your humility? I think not, Eldri."

Roca looked around. Dehya stood in the entrance, one hand on her hip. She wore a white jumpsuit, the type used by travelers because its cloth was intelligent enough to clean itself and stay free of wrinkles.

"My greetings," Dehya said.

"Of course for my humility," the Bard told her. He lifted his cane and pointed it at her. "You must not be mtimidated by my intellect, Dehya."

She raised her eyebrows, which gave her waif-like face a fey quality. "Now I know you must be feeling better. You are as annoying as ever."

He glared at her, but Roca knew he was enjoying himself. "I am not the one who cavorts around the Assembly instead of meeting her in-laws."

"Well, I am the pharaoh, you know. Governing is what we pharaoh types do."

"Yes, well, you should be a man."

Dehya laughed. "Good gods, Eldri, I hope not."

"A man should be the ruler," he said patiendy.

Dehya strolled into her house. "Men, my dear brother-in-law, should be secluded in harems."

He shook his cane at her. "You are deluded."

"You would look very nice in those long robes."

What he looked was unimpressed. "I shall send my army to take over this Orbiter and put a proper Bard on your throne."

Her eyes danced. "If you would like to send handsome fellows here to sing, I'm sure our women wouldn't protest."

"I will send some genuine men," Eldrinson offered. "Not like the ones here who let women tell them what to do."

"Oh stop, you two," Roca said, laughing. In truth, it relieved her to hear them argue. Even a month ago Eldrinson would have had no spirit for such bantering.